About swim.et

Most people in Ethiopia learn to swim the way their parents learned. A friend takes you to a pool they know. You figure out the hours by showing up and hoping the gate is open. If you want a coach, you ask around until someone knows a guy who knows a guy. It works, but it works slowly. And for a lot of people, it does not work at all.

We started swim.et because we kept watching the same thing happen. Someone would decide they were ready to learn. They would search online, find a phone number that no longer worked, show up to a pool that was closed for maintenance, and give up for another year. The information was not just scattered. It was not there at all.

This is a country with no coastline and a deep respect for water. Ethiopians compete in long-distance running because the infrastructure rewards it. Swimming has never had that infrastructure. There are good pools in Addis Ababa. There are excellent coaches who trained abroad and came home to teach. There are kids who would love to join a team if they only knew where to look. The pieces exist. They just do not connect.

So we are building the connective tissue. A directory of pools that someone checks regularly, with real hours and real prices. A place to find coaches by what they actually teach, not just by word of mouth. A way to track progress so a beginner can see that week three was better than week one, even when it still feels hard.

We do not think swimming is going to solve every problem. But we do think the ability to find a pool, book a lesson, and track your progress should not be a luxury. It should be a search and a click. That is what we are building. From first splash to first lap.